[OSM-legal-talk] Licence termination

[David Groom]

I hope I'm missing something, but.

Clause 9.2 "If You are not in breach of the terms of this License, the 
Licensor will not terminate Your rights under it."

Clause 9.5 "Notwithstanding the above, Licensor reserves the right to 
release the Database under different license terms or to stop distributing 
or making available the Database. Releasing the Database under different 
license terms or stopping the distribution of the Database WILL NOT WITHDRAW 
THIS LICENCE (or any other license that has been, or is required to be, 
granted under the terms of this License), and this License WILL CONTINUE IN 
FULL FORCE AND EFFECT unless terminated as stated above"   My 
capitalisation.

and from the Definitions section " Database - A collection of material (the 
Contents) arranged in a systematic or methodical way and individually 
accessible by electronic or other means offered under the terms of this 
License."

>From this I infer that, unless a "Person"  is in breach of the Terms of the 
licence, we give them the right to access the OSM database under the terms 
of the licence as it was at the time they first started to use the database.

If at a later stage we find the current wording of the ODbL to we flawed, 
and we wish to change it, those changes become effective for new users, but 
not existing users.

In effect there is no way, short of stopping the project and making the 
database unavailable, that licence conditions can be changed for existing 
users.

IMHO we need to be 100% certain this licence is OK, as for many users we 
don't get a chance to change it later if the licence has problems we have 
not foreseen.

David